"…the principal resource for the Spanish and Mexican history of Texas through 1836. Particularly rich in administrative, social, and ethno-history, they are an essential source for any scholar interested in the history of the Borderlands."

John Wheat, Archivist, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin

From 1717 through 1836 the governments of Spain and Mexico collected in San Antonio de Bexar (when that city was the capital of Texas under Spanish and Mexican rule) an amazing series of official documents detailing the military, civilian, and political life of the Spanish province of Texas and the Mexican state of Coahuila y Texas. These records, which have become known as the Bexar Archives, constitute the most complete and detailed primary source in existence for the study of colonial Texas.

Now, in cooperation with the Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, UPA has published The Bexar Archives, on microfilm, reproducing in their entirety its more than 250,000 pages of manuscript documentation and the more than 4,000 pages of printed material on colonial and regional history.

The scope of the documentation contained in The Bexar Archives is as vast as the territory whose affairs it recorded. The earliest documents deal mainly with the affairs of the Canary Island settlers, religious matters, and relations with Indians. At the opening of the 19th century, friction along the Texas-Louisiana border, Anglo-American incursions, smuggling, and troubles over Indian raids and atrocities become prominent topics. The Mexican revolution of 1810, with its counterpart in Texas the following year, is vividly recorded, as are the Gutiérrez-Magee invasion of 1812–1813, the battle of Medina in 1813, the Champ D’Asile incident in 1818, Dr. Long’s expedition in 1819, the coming of Moses Austin in 1820, the Mexican independent regime in 1821, the Fredonian Rebellion in Nacogdoches in 1827, and, finally, the independence of Texas in 1836.

However, to enumerate only the high points of Texas history covered in The Bexar Archives is to do a disservice to the collection, because these records also cover in detail virtually all aspects of life in Spanish and Mexican Texas. The archives provide comprehensive documentation for the general governmental administration of the province; the establishment of presidios, settlements, and missions; French threats in the 18th century; the founding of San Antonio, Espíritu Santo, and other settlements; relationships between the clergy and the military; administrative investigations; fortifications; livestock raising; mail communication; transportation; fencing; grazing; commerce; slavery; agriculture; legal proceedings; foreign intervention and infiltration; 18th-century imperial struggles; shipwrecks off the Gulf Coast; colonization; efforts to consolidate imperial control and establish better communications; revolutionary movements; and the collapse of the Spanish Empire.

The types of documents that make up The Bexar Archives are diverse, each in its own way illuminating different aspects of Texas history. Copybooks reporting trials of smugglers, highwaymen, thieves, traitors, murderers, deserters from the military, and others who failed to comply with Spanish and Mexican laws give the reader an eyewitness view of judicial processes in early Texas. Royal orders and other official communications record the administrative and financial techniques used by the government. Letters, dispatches, legal papers, and other documents composed by officials, soldiers, and clergymen provide a vivid account of 18th- and 19th-century life. Reports of inspection tours, reconnaissance trips, explorations, settlements, and expeditions against hostile Indians abound, as do numerous diaries, rosters, inventories, and lists of Indian gifts. Various additional records include petitions, orders, itineraries, decrees, other legal documents, and "residencia" reports.

As virtually no vestige of the original archival structure of the collection survived the revolutionary vicissitudes of Texas during the early 19th century, a task of herculean proportions faced the historians and archivists who were charged with the responsibility of reducing the records to functional order after the collection was transferred to the University of Texas at Austin in 1899.

Following intensive study the university’s analysts created a pattern of organization that provided for the division of the collection into five basic series. All handwritten documents were organized in a chronological General Manuscript Series. The remaining printed materials, which constitute a small fraction of the total collection, were then arranged in four supplementary printed series.

Printed guides provide access to each of the three parts of this collection. In addition, in order to bring out internal relationships and to provide a basic key to the